Back onto the radar screen briefly ...

Had a nice few days; up to Nottingham Saturday to see Chris, Dan, Chiara, and over the course of two vast evening meals most of my Nottingham friends turning up to visit. We didn't get to the Peaks, but I got to fly a remote-controlled plane belonging to Chris's friend Leonardo; and whilst it did drop out of sight behind the trees and take half an hour to be rediscovered, total damage was the displacement of one small wooden shim.

Then to Cardiff to see papersky and zorinth at Papersky's aunt's house; good food and fine conversation, and on Tuesday a lovely trip up to Castell Carreg Cennen and then across the Brecon Beacons, the kinds of gently-undulating mountains that make you want to get out and run up to the ridge, were my body not so eloquent in arguing against. We got out, but I have not the mountain-goat balance of zorinth so we didn't get up to the ridge.

This morning we went to the bizarre Castell Coch near Cardiff before I got on the train home. It's an amazing piece of work, with the most superb proto-Art Nouveau wall-paintings; stencilling on all the unpainted walls of a sort I'd only seen in major Eastern European cathedrals before.